April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Among the Citigroup Inc. bankers
gathered in Hong Kong on Aug. 11, 2006, with the mayor of the
northeastern Chinese city of Tieling to discuss investments in
an industrial park was the son of a powerful China princeling.

Li Wangzhi, who had joined Citigroup after earning a
master’s degree at Columbia University, was the first son of Bo
Xilai, according to two schoolmates of Li and repeated on an
online publication affiliated with the Ministry of Culture.
Extended family members of Bo, then commerce minister and now
ousted Chongqing Communist Party boss, have also had positions
in such firms as alternative-energy company China Everbright
International Ltd., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

While the accumulation of influence is commonplace among
relatives of politicians worldwide, the Bo family fortune of at
least $136 million may fuel perceptions of corruption in the
Communist Party and deepen social tensions over China’s widening
wealth gap. The party has sought to cordon off from politics the
investigations of Bo and his second wife, arrested on suspicion
of murder, with an official commentary stating that the inquiry
is solely a matter of law.

“The danger for them, the Chinese, is that the whole of
the Politburo and their Central Committee colleagues will be
exposed as a new property-owning class,” said Roderick
MacFarquhar, a Harvard University professor who focuses on
Chinese politics. “It’s already got out of hand. The problem
for the regime is that it is now out in the public sphere.”

Multiple Names

Bo Xilai’s relatives built their assets in a nation where
per-capita income ranks 121st out of 215 countries, according to
the World Bank. They set up offshore companies and used multiple
names, making it more difficult to track their titles and
business dealings. Companies in Dalian and Chongqing, where Bo
Xilai held office, were among the beneficiaries of their
investments, corporate filings in Hong Kong and the U.S. show.

Li Wangzhi, 34, is the son of Bo Xilai by Li Danyu, Bo’s
wife from a marriage that ended in divorce. Bo’s son with second
wife Gu Kailai, named Bo Guagua, 24, studies at Harvard
University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two of Gu Kailai’s four
sisters had at least a combined $126 million in disclosed share
holdings and proceeds from real-estate investments, Bloomberg
News reported on April 14.

Task Force

China sent a task force to investigate claims Bo and his
family hold assets in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post
said, citing unidentified sources. The Financial Times reported
separately that Bo ally Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Communist
Party’s top body, is being probed over disciplinary violations.

The website of Tieling, a city in China’s rust belt, shows
Bo’s elder son to be one of the attendees at the 2006 meeting.
He was registered with Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures
Commission as an employee of Citigroup Global Markets Asia Ltd.
in 2005 and 2006. Richard Tesvich, a spokesman for Citigroup in
Hong Kong, declined to comment.

Tieling served as a jumping-off point for another of Bo
Xilai’s entourage, now also fallen from power: Wang Lijun. In
2008, Wang followed Bo Xilai to Chongqing, where as the top cop
for an urban region of 29 million he won plaudits for his
crackdown on crime.

Wang is now under investigation following his flight in
February to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, which set off the
chain of events that led to Bo’s downfall and Gu Kailai’s arrest
on suspicion in the murder of U.K. businessman Neil Heywood.

Modest Pay

The Bo clan’s wealth contrasts with his modest official
remuneration. As the Communist Party boss of Chongqing, he rated
a salary of about 10,000 yuan ($1,585) a month, according to a
report on the website of the Communist Party’s official People’s
Daily newspaper. The son of one of the original revolutionaries
who founded Communist China, Bo is one of the so-called
princeling class.

Chinese legislators have amassed outsized assets, with the
wealth of the richest 70 members of the National People’s
Congress amounting to $90 billion last year, 12 times the
combined wealth of the 660 top officials in the U.S. government,
Bloomberg News reported Feb. 27.

In Bo’s clan, elder son Li and Bo Xilai’s elder brother, Bo
Xiyong, a vice chairman at China Everbright, helped manage
companies with offshore registrations from Mauritius in the
Indian Ocean to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. Bo
Xiyong also goes by the name Li Xueming.

Columbia Degree

Li Wangzhi graduated from Columbia’s School of
International and Public Affairs in New York in 2003 with a
master’s degree in international affairs, according to school
records. He has also used the names Brendan Li, which appears in
a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and
Li Xiaobai, which is on a posting on a Peking University-affiliated website.

Tang Baiqiao, 44, a classmate of Li Wangzhi’s at Columbia,
said Li told him he was the son of Bo Xilai. Having such a
powerful official as a father opened doors for Li, even as he
seemed to dislike his parent, Tang said in an interview at his
office in Flushing in the Queens borough of New York.

Tang, president of the Democracy Academy of China, which
promotes human rights, also identified a photograph on the
website of the Entrepreneur Club of Peking University as that of
Li Wangzhi. The accompanying profile has the name Li Xiaobai.
The biography, in Chinese, matches publicly available details
about Li, including his work at Citigroup.

Exclusive Club

Du Hongjiang, who attended Peking University at the same
time as Li, also confirmed in a phone call that Li was Bo
Xilai’s son. Like Li, Du is a member of the Entrepreneur Club of
Peking University, an exclusive association that includes Robin
Li, chief executive officer of search engine Baidu Inc. and
billionaire Huang Nubo.

From Columbia, Li started a career in private-equity
investing that focused on companies based in Dalian. His father
was mayor of the northeastern port city from 1993 to 2000,
according to Bo Xilai’s official biography on the Xinhua News
Agency.

A Brendan Li is listed as managing director for a
Mauritius-registered company, Laoniu Investment Limited Co.,
according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records. Li
Wangzhi set up the Laoniu Fund, according to the Entrepreneur
Club website. Laoniu Investment is an arm of the fund.

In a reference to Li’s parents, a Macquarie Capital
Securities Limited report from July 2011 says: “Their son, Li
Wangzhi (Brandon Li), is a graduate of Columbia University in
New York and currently pursues a business career in Beijing and
Dalian.”

Nasdaq Listing

SEC records from 2010 show that Laoniu Investment was part
of a group of more than 10 entities that in 2007 bought a 15.6
percent share of HiSoft Technology International Ltd., a Nasdaq-listed information technology company based in Dalian.

Li is also linked to Chong’er Investment and Consultancy
Co. by office and e-mail addresses. Chong’er was a Chinese
prince in the seventh century B.C. who fled his home in the
ancient state of Jin, modern-day Shanxi province and the
ancestral home of the Bo, Li and Gu families, because his father
made his half-brother the crown prince. Chong’er eventually
fought back and took the crown.

Chong’er Investment shared an address with Laoniu, though a
visit showed the companies no longer occupy the offices in
western Beijing listed in SEC filings. Chong’er has a second
address, appearing on job recruiting websites, that matches that
of Hacheers Fund, of which Li is a partner, according to his
profile page on the Entrepreneur Club website. The website of
the Peking University Career Center provides a Chong’er e-mail
account for Hacheers job applicants.

Family Tension

Family tensions may again be signaled in Li Wangzhi’s use
of the name Li Xiaobai on the Entrepreneur Club site. The
moniker uses the same Chinese characters as the name of another
seventh-century B.C. prince who successfully fought his brother
to succeed their father.

Li in July 2008 formed a Hong Kong company, Laoniu Xuelong
Holdings Ltd, and was listed in Hong Kong company records as a
director along with Fumio Higashi, president of Daito Kaiun
Sangyo Co., a Kagoshima, Japan-based shipping company. The
owners were Higashi and a Tortola, British Virgin Islands-based
company using the Chinese name Yue Yi (BVI) Ltd., Hong Kong
company filings show.

That year Laoniu invested an undisclosed amount in another
Dalian company, Dalian Xuelong Industrial Group Co. Daito lists
Xuelong as its representative in Dalian. Daito ships “stress-free” black cattle bred by Dalian Xuelong, which, according to
Daito’s website, are massaged while listening to classical
music.

Phone Off

Li wasn’t available when telephoned at law firm Beijing
Zhongjing, where legal directories list him as a partner. No one
was at home when a reporter visited a Beijing residence listed
for Li in Hong Kong company filings. A mobile phone number given
to Bloomberg by a former business associate reached a phone that
was turned off over three days. Li didn’t respond to an e-mail
message sent to an address on the Entrepreneur Club website.

His biography on the website of the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to China’s
legislature, shows a balding man with eyes similar to those of
his younger, more famous, sibling.

The same bald man was identified in photos and a July 2010
online video on the official website of Zhangye City in western
China’s Gansu province as Bo Xiyong, deputy general manager of
parent company China Everbright Group.

Everbright International spokeswoman Olivia Wang said the
company was looking into Li’s identity.

Immortal Patriarch

Bo Xiyong is the oldest son of Bo Yibo, a former vice
premier of China who died in 2007. The family patriarch was one
of the so-called eight immortals who helped steer China after
the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.

In 2010 and 2011, Li Xueming sold 12 million shares in
China Everbright International, cashing out HK$43.2 million
($5.6 million), according to Hong Kong Exchange filings. That
left options to sell 10 million shares, according to the
company’s latest annual report, valued at HK$36.9 million.

Singapore and Hong Kong corporate filings reviewed by
Bloomberg News show shared addresses, shareholders and directors
in both cities, as well as the British Virgin Islands and
Beijing, that indicate Bo Xiyong and Li Xueming are the same
person.

Property Development

Li Xueming was a director of HKC Holdings Ltd., a Hong
Kong-based property developer and investor, from March 1999 to
June 2011, according to the company’s annual reports. The
company’s 2010 annual report shows it owns properties across
China, from Tianjin in the north to Chongqing, which Bo Xilai
led until last month, in the southwest.

At HKC, Li Xueming received a HK$100,000 annual stipend,
according to the company’s 2010 annual report. He had no major
role in the company and did not have any shares, said Sam Wong,
a senior vice president, in a telephone interview.

“I’ve never seen him at board meetings” over the last
five years, Wong said. “The reason he was here was because
China Everbright owned HKC a long time ago, and they wanted him
to be a director.”

Bo Xilai also has two younger brothers, Bo Xicheng and Bo
Xining, according to a journal of Communist Party history. Bo
Xicheng is chairman of Beijing Liuhexing Hotel Management Co.
and former chief of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Tourism,
according to a transcript of an online interview Bo Xicheng had
with the official People’s Daily website in 2007.

Bo Xicheng also served as an independent director of Citic
Securities Co., a Beijing-based brokerage, from July 2003 to May
2006, according to the company’s 2006 annual report.

Bo Xicheng’s office in Beijing is accessible only through a
small parking garage. A woman who opened the steel door a crack
said Bo wasn’t there, before closing it quickly.